FA Yuletide Writing Prize — Shortlisted Story
Theme: Dark Yuletide
Year: 2025/2026
Author: Nwajesu Ekpenisi

A. 

A shadow lurks in the dark. It creeps up behind you as you nip down the trail leading to your  street. It’s been following you for a while, but you’re on a call with your grandmama, so you  don’t notice. Streetlights flank the trail, and though some flicker, you seem unbothered. You  know every inch of this road. You’re familiar with the drones of cricket camped in the  shrubberies, the swaying of leaves to the soft tempo of the Harmattan wind. Every evening since the start of the Christmas season, you walk this same path after spending your day  washing, perming, and sweeping up hair shed from wigs and weaves at the salon where you  work late into the evening to earn enough money to splurge and send to your grandmama.  

Your grandmama asks when you will return. Christmas is two days from now, she says.  You tell her you’re swamped at work, but unfailingly, New Year’s Eve. She laughs and tells  you to keep to your promise. Remember last year, you said the same thing, she says. But I  sent money nah, you butt in, laughing alongside her. She tells you the money you’ve been  sending helps, but the currency she craves now is your presence. It’s been two years now since she last held you in her gaze. You say nothing. Sadness tugs at your heart. From a  distance, scraps of carol songs and the pops of firecrackers echo. She’s been relying on meds  so her blood pressure stays in a healthy range, she chatters away, and so absorbed you are in the call you don’t see the shadow aiming at you. A heavy weight—solid, like a brick— smashes into your head. You yelp. Your eyes swim in their sockets. The world spins. You  hear your grandmama probing if everything is alright, as your fingers go limp, phone slipping off your grip. You feel strong arms sweep you off your feet, and next, you’re reclining on a  soft surface. Strange sounds come racing into your ears: a heavy thud like a door closing; a  vibrating hum, scampering up your spine; a high-pitched whine that drowns out the raspy  voices soaring around you and lulls you into a deep slumber. 

B. 

You open your eyes to the light from a fluorescent bulb. It beams into them, causing your gaze  to narrow into a squint. Blurry faces loom above you. You can’t really tell if you’re dreaming  or not, until you feel splashes of cold liquid on your face and a tap on your shoulder.  

The fog in your eyes gradually dissipates. Before you stand four tallish, strange-looking men. Each brandishing a gun. One of them, a bald, muscly man walks up to you. There’s a  placid stillness to him that seems like a guise of what he truly is. Fear swells in your heart  like a maelstrom. You begin to scream, consumed by an overwhelming urge to run. But your feet are tied, hands chained backwards to a dust-patched wall. If you like scream down the  roof, girl, Bald man says, nobody will hear you. Someone whimpers, and when you turn  towards your left, you see another girl, young like you, shackled across the room.  

Please don’t harm me, you beg, eyes stinging with tears. Panic froths up your chest as  your eyes dart from one man to another. They are clad in black, and masked. Except Bald man. He inches closer and says, I only need your compliance. He waves his phone at you.  Each of you will call your families and ask them to send money for your release, he begins, and as he’s about to speak again, a scream from a nearby room interrupts him: the cry of a frightened man begging for his life. 

Bald man guffaws.  

Did you hear that? He raises his gun, pointing towards the direction the sound emanates.  You nod, frantic. The scream intensifies. If the people you call fail to do as we ask, you will be  in that room next, he says, and claps. Another man with jet-black dreadlocks falling to his  shoulder strides into the room. There are thick red splatters on his sweaty face, his beard, and  vest. Like coagulated blood. On his chest, a smattering of hair like ants breeding on sugar. 

Twelve Million Naira each, Bald man howls. The call starts now. 

The other girl, shuddering, goes through the ordeal of phone calls to her family. A male  voice over the phone promises to pay the ransom as soon as possible. 

Your heart thumps in your gorge. You’ve no one left to call but your grandmama. But can you bring yourself to take the risk? The old woman is far too fragile, you know. This woman  who has been battling health complications long before she took you under her wing after your mama died of liver cancer and your father—a coward, as you always call him, out of fear of a  new spouse’s madness—abandoned you, his child, with your maternal grandmother and  severed every tie with you. Your grandmama who almost leaped into the coffin the day her  only daughter—your mother—died. How would she react to this news?  Don’t waste my time! 

Please sir, the only person I have is my granny. 

Then call her number! 

She’s sick, erm— 

The man strikes you across the face. The tang of blood fills your mouth. You feel blood stream down your nostrils. You don’t know when you begin spluttering out the number, your voice breaking with every breath. Bald man dials it, but no dial tone comes. He tries again. The  same. Is this a joke to you? He fumes, angry blood vessels taking over the whites of his eyes.  He strikes you again and again. You begin to cry. 

Give me another contact! 

You think of your father. Calling him is a dead end. The last time you reached out to ask  for help to process your admission into the university—just before you abandoned everything  and left for the city to work at the salon—his new wife had intercepted the call. Don’t ever call this number again, she barked. He’s probably cocooned in her arms now, perfectly  content to let her keep you out. You crumple under the onslaught of sobs. The tears from your  eyes are a rivulet.  

Bald man glowers at you. You don’t protest when he fetches your phone and demands for  its PIN and account info. When he finishes, he turns to the dreadlocked man and instructs him to  take you to the shamble. You scream and thrash as he drags you by your shackles. Phlegm,  tears, conflating with blood flood down your face.  

C.  

The shamble is the size of a cubicle. It’s aglow with fluorescent light. The windows are taped shut with black tarpaulin. The walls, too, are shrouded in plastic sheetings with splotches of  clotted blood. The floor, tiled. A slimy pool of thick blood clogs around a drain. The air is  uncongenial, heavy with the smell of something decaying. There’s a large metal table at the  center, and on it the mutilated body of a man spread-eagled, headless, innards in full glare, like  a cluster of bloated earthworms. Beside the table, a rack of blades. 

Your heart hammers, your legs spasming, body prickling with electric fear. Something frigid  dies in your throat. Dreadlocked man hauls you across the floor and shoves you down against the wall, the shackle in your hands snapped into a bolt secured in the foundation. He walks to  the table, selects a cleaver, and starts working on the mutilated body. The silence in the room  is fractured with the thwack-thwack-thwack of steel biting deep into flesh and bones.  

In the bleakness of the moment, your lips move in prayer, as your eyes track the arc of the  cleaver, each thud vibrating through your bones. Inside you, a dirge is playing. You grieve for  your grandmama. You imagine her on her pallet, lantern lit at a corner, a smile on her lips,  awaiting a granddaughter who will never return. The fear inside you rises like a tidal wave at 

the final strike of the blade.  

But sometimes, fear is swallowed by a sudden realization, a certainty of a fate already sealed.

And so, you halt your prayer as he approaches. When he undoes your chains from the  foundation, you feel a sudden surge of adrenaline. You ram your foot into his groin. He grunts,  falling to his knees, attempting to shield his abdomen. You lurch at the side of his shoulder  next, sinking your teeth into his flesh. He growls, walling you off, slamming you against the  wall, knocking you down. Your head throbs. In your mouth, the taste of blood and ripped salty flesh. The man, clutching his bleeding shoulder, reaches for the cleaver. And as you stagger to  your feet, to launch another attack, the cleaver descends, eating deep into your skull.